Web-Based Resources

I personally do not think there is anything more valuable to our students than the world wide web at this point. I know this is not a novel opinion or ground-breaking idea in any way, but I think it is important to remind ourselves every now and then how much is actually available on the web. Web-based resources obviously provide students with an opportunity to continue a lesson at home, again nothing ground-breaking there. The difference between anything traditional and anything web-based is the fun factor. Let's face it people, the internet and the web are fun and easy and a lot of the stuff is more attention grabbing. Now, imagine yourself in the mind of teenager...books are boring! They do not want to read or go to the library, at this point I think it's fair to say we need the internet and the web.

With most of my classes I have eliminated the idea of doing any kind of traditional research paper and replaced with argumentative essay questions. In these assignments I always instruct students to go to the internet and back up any opinion with the facts that swayed them one way or another citing each web-site used of course. I realize that there is value in knowing how to research something properly, but in a point and click world 99.9% of students are going straight to web for the information anyway. Furthermore, thanks to tools like ERIC and the EBSCO Host, all the information you would normally need for a research paper, is available through web-based sources, why wouldn't we encourage our students to go there? It's easier then pouring through encyclopedias and scholarly journals and because of this students are more likely to push research beyond what is expected of them.

As I said earlier, my opinions aren't ground-breaking but I think we need to remind ourselves sometimes that everything you could possible want ever at anytime, anywhere is probably available on the Web. And if its not there now, fear not, reasearch predicts that over the next three years, the amount of data and information on the web will roughly DOUBLE every 11 HOURS, (1990's Tech, History Channel - Winter 2008.) So if the climate patterns on one of the moons of Jupiter are eluding you this morning, check back after dinner.